Europe 2009

I'm on my way out of Taiwan now, so I can quit moaning about the Taipei Times and about AIT. Let's go back to where this sorry adventure started. Not that I am sorry about it, I should be proud, but I'm not allowed to be because of the constrictions of the environment, and the place I'm in.

Let's go back two years, to March 2009.

Here I am, living in a small European country. Fitting in as well as a wealthy not-quite-young but not-quite-middle-aged American can. Of course, I tried to learn the local language, but there's always an accent left. One of the reasons I got the job was my talent for languages. I could understand the locals as long as they didn't veer too far into dialect.

Anyway, I wasn't there for language studies. Infiltration was my hidden agenda. Publicly, I was a concerned American at the time we got a new president and you didn't have to pretend you were Canadian if you were really American. In Taiwan, when you say you're Canadian, people think of drug-dealing English teachers. In Europe, they think of an improved version of Americans.

So I was a local activist for more cycling paths, fewer cars, even if I drove a Mercedes myself, but the locals didn't find that a contradiction in terms. I was a good citizen, pretending to favor environmental and other soft-left causes. That was in my adopted hometown.

But I could travel to other parts of the country and adopt a rawer image. A health nut, a stark opponent of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons and animal exploitation for corporate greed. Of course, I took care to leave the Mercedes on the other part of town, inside an underground garage. I plotted the activists' illegal entry into nuclear power plants and NATO military bases. And I plotted their arrest as well. That was all part of the job.

My home life was pretty simple. No confusing women things, maybe my neighbors even thought I was gay, I don't know. A bit of gardening, which helped me getting rougher hands, useful with the eco crowd. Lots of Internet stuff, but hey, I was an American geek, right. I never paid much attention to news from Taiwan, or from anywhere else but the US and my adopted European home country. That all changed in April 2009.